21 July 2011

The Devil's Double

Uday Hussein and his body double Latif make a strange couple: in The Devil's Double, a smart and ontologically complex gangster movie, they represent the duality of man, the clash of id and ego, even the realization of Narcissus's longing. Indeed, Latif's tragedy is like that of the clone, who tries to assume another's identity but cannot extinguish his own...

Uday, the modern-day Arabian prince, lives like an American drug dealer, surrounded by weapons, women, drugs, cars and designer clothes; he's steeped in Western decadence down to the discotheques, where he snorts cocaine and grinds against women. “My cock is well known in Baghdad,” he tells Latif. “I love cunt more than I love God.” The Husseins are not exactly Taliban. It's like Tony Montana elevated to emir, suggesting that to idealize crime lords is to celebrate tyrants. We may love our gangsters, our tales of lavish underworld debauchery—director Lee Tamahori quotes The Godfather with a shoot-out at a vehicle checkpoint—but can the Scarface glorifiers really bring themselves to glamorize Uday Fucking Hussein? Cowardly, the movie offers them an out...